Unbound
by Seoinage
Summary: This is not your normal tale as there are no constraints within. Written for the KakaSaku LJ Community's Edgar Allan Poe Contest. This is for Week 1's prompt: The Tell-Tale Heart. Rated M for mature content.


**Title:** Unbound

**Anime:** Naruto

**Pairing:** Kakashi x Sakura

**Rating: **M

**Words: **2,162

**Disclaimer:** NARUTO © 1999 by MASASHI KISHIMOTO/SHUEISHA Inc and assorted corporations who bought various rights to it.

**A/N: **Written for the Edgar Allan Poe Contest over at the KakaSaku LJ Community. The prompt for Week #1's is The Tell-Tale Heart. I hope that in writing this, I was able to capture some of its essence.

The rating M is accurate, so gentle readers, please heed its warning.

A grateful thanks goes to randomsomeone, who beta'd this with only a 1 minute warning!

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For all the missions assigned and completed, for all those who whispered of my name and nicknames and reputation, I knew my life to be simple and repetitive just like any other. Breathe, sleep, eat, work, and of course, enjoy one's hobbies on the side. Sometimes the breathing, sleeping, and eating took a back seat to working (though quite often I felt my breath catch at a particularly juicy scene in the reading of my beloved novels), but complaining about it never won the day. Trust me. I know.

I considered myself a reasonable man, not prone to highs and lows. Steady, one would describe me. Perhaps not reliable in a timely manner as some would wish, but I was sane. And focused.

Many things of my past I kept to myself for various reasons. With no one to answer to for the vast majority of my existence, I found it easy to continue in that way. Mess equaled openings. However, the fullness in the recesses of my memory actually allowed me to use them to my advantage. Pain once felt sharpens the eyes to those emitting the same. Loss experienced whets the nose to the suffering in the air. Grief may muffle the ears for a time but hearing comes back a hundredfold.

So like the weapon I am, I honed myself to a keen edge. A blade imbedded with loyalty and intelligence and skills. One always wielded in the name of Konoha.

Until it was for her.

Even now, I carry out my habits and dealings with people in a straightforward manner and handle upheavals with equanimity. Admittedly, the introduction of Team Seven started off a bit rough – honestly, they were brats – and ended even rougher. When Sasuke tried to strike Sakura a killing blow, any lingering compunction about putting _him_ down melted away. So when the chance came in another confrontation (Naruto's loudmouth ways but vastly improved skills serving to both confront and distract the Uchiha), I disabled and discarded the rabid dog without blinking an eye.

No one would hurt her again. Even me.

Our lives, never as simple as civilians, floated downstream all the same. Somewhere in the midst of the fighting, defending, and diversions of the Fourth Great War, Sakura and I became close. Or closer. At the very least, my appreciation for her grew all the more as a shinobi until finally I only saw her, a woman-child who wove herself into me like a fairy tossing golden powder about, willy-nilly. When the dust settled, a woman stood in her place.

A pink-haired, green-eyed woman with both potential and the power to back it up.

One I could not turn away from even with all my supposed will power and fortitude. Not when her questions called me to answer her, haltingly at first but firmer with the passage of time. Not when her quickening breath and fluttering heartbeat both aroused and made me protective.

We became close enough so that the heady salt of her gathered on my tongue as I ran myself _over_ and _around_ and _in_. My hands, rough with the years, grasped her against me, lingering over the smooth swell of hip, running up toned calves until I reached her core to fill her. Close enough, and at the same time not enough. Not even as she gasped and sputtered like a wild thing in my hold.

I imagined many things that I wanted to do to her. Every time she ran in front of me. Whenever her fist would break the earth to trap the enemy within. Especially when her ungloved hands would glow green with healing chakra and place themselves on me, as her thigh would find its way between mine.

Even as I raked my teeth against the side of her neck and surged into her time and again, (pounding away to the rhythm of beating hearts and unspent need), it was not enough. Her eyes speared mine in a temptress's gaze, commanding me to love her, only her.

So I kissed her, open-mouthed and hungry, hands tangling into her bubblegum-colored tresses. Her legs wrapped around my hips, ensnaring and welcoming. Still, it was not close enough.

Against a tree or in a tree…Never enough.

No one knew of our relationship, hidden by the war, our mutual past, and society's rules about our official association. Soon enough, I…we…grew to want other things. Sakura, surprisingly, never voiced it out loud. I understood it just the same with each look her heavily lidded green eyes threw me and each haunting laugh (less melodious with the passing days), that escaped her.

My kunoichi, like her cherry blossom namesake, thrived best while rooted in deep soil under the open blue sky. I provided the earth upon which to sustain her, but the sky became another matter.

So I began with little things amongst the presence of others. A small brush of hand against her lower back. Opening a door for her to pass through first. The paying of a tab. Showing up only ten minutes late rather than the usual hour. _How could people not see it? How could they frown and think it wrong?_

Sakura – so innocent still – blushed at the first, raised an eyebrow over the second, gaped in disbelief at the third, and continued to exclaim my lateness in chorus with Naruto, though with laughter in her voice rather than the disgruntlement in his, at the fourth.

The week of her voluntary/involuntary stay at the hospital (not because of any personal injury but for all the emergencies that occurred requiring her attention), spurred me to a plan of action that would culminate in something sure to please the pink-haired dynamite. My confidence in her approval came because I read her like the most divine of books. Many would call her an open one, wearing her emotions constantly for all to see. Many men, my so-called rivals for her attention, would wish to think they understood her. Only I held the key though.

So every day at noon for seven days, I made sure to leave a lunch bento with a freshly picked flower in her office. Though I would not have minded cooking for her, I felt like indulging my hard working medic by ordering take out from her most frequented restaurants. To practice my skills and to keep the surprise a _surprise_, I picked up the food using a henge. Never hurts to keep up with the basics after all.

For a personal touch, I garnished each bento with umeboshi, one of her favorite things to eat and one of my favorite things to see her eating. Just the thought of how her plump lips would open to take in a pickled ume and then using that sweet mouth to suck and nibble on them…

Every day for seven days, she found time to coo over the flower wonderingly, exclaim over the bento in amazement, and devour the umeboshi with relish. After the brief respite, off into the frenzied hospital hallways she would disappear. At night, Sakura collapsed into an exhausted puddle on the foldaway futon in her office floor while I would sit guard outside in the cool night air. Far away to not raise suspicion, but near enough to offer assistance in her unguarded state.

On the night of the seventh day, I unobtrusively escorted my tired kunoichi to ensure that her unsteady movements landed her at home in her own bed and not flat-backed on some street on the way there. (It happened twice in the past so one should understand my concern.) To avoid any accusations of not having faith in her abilities, I found it easier to just play shadow guard.

The house she arrived at did not include her mother and father as she moved into her own abode just after the war's end. She loved her parents, but they did not understand the pains she carried and the wounds upon her tender heart. The burdens dulled and jaded her far beyond what Sasuke ever marked upon her. At the same time, these new burdens sharpened her, and in the sharpening, whittled her down until needle thin to breaking. Young and old, girl and woman, innocent and cynical all bound into one. She who I called mine.

_I'll give you our open sky to live under_, I vowed. _One upon which your laughter will be free again, your eyes clearer than they are now, and your countenance light as it should be._

As she entered the living room, I knocked on the window before letting myself inside. She shook her head fondly at my usual entrance and said_, Don't expect much out of me since my head feels like it is floating away. _

Smiling gently, I just steered her into the kitchen where she found the jar of unopened umeboshi and a covered bowl of rice. Though fatigue still emanated from her, Sakura brightened and leapt towards the treat. I declined when she offered some to me. They had been prepared specifically for her after all. After watching her inhale almost the entire jar and all the rice, I finally interrupted by presenting her with a single flower.

Her eyes widened, silently asking._ Was it you these past seven days_?

Stepping up to her, I surveyed the rumpled mess of her uniform and the bit of blood smudging the side of her face missed during a quick wash up. Her scent drifted up to me, still sweet though layered with the sweat of the day and the aseptic chemicals of the hospital.

My answer was to simply tuck the blossom into her hair and then to catch her as she fell.

It took the entire night to finish but complete everything I did. Meticulously and cleanly, I might add. Having the foresight to research and prepare paid off as always. Sakura would definitely appreciate it.

Taking her body, now a little lighter yet more jointed than before, I arranged her just so even as my blood pumped and my chakra swirled erratically around me. The feeling of being _more than before_ filled me until all my senses could only focus and expand like the whole universe opening up. _Like a star going supernova against the blackness of space. Or the first time the two of us came together…_

Which it was.

Picking up the three packs (one that Sakura liked to take while on solo missions, one with the tools used last night, and one carrying my precious cargo), I took one long look around for us before making the signs to teleport away.

Later, around the time when Sakura should have reported in during her mission, Naruto pounded on the door to my house demanding to be let in. When I opened the door the blonde jumped around, waving his arms agitatedly and asking if I had heard from our favorite kunoichi. Sai stood silently behind him.

Shaking my head negatively, I responded with, _I thought you knew she was away on a mission._

When Naruto's words erupted in a mumbled sputter, I looked to Sai who calmly explained, _Sakura, though she made it to her destination and first checked in, gave no followups after. Tsunade would have summoned Team Kakashi before her to clarify personally, but Naruto overheard and ran out before she could. Knowing the urgency of the situation, the Hokage bade us to leave at once._

Nodding my head, I commanded the two to pack light and to meet at the gates in twenty minutes. Naruto calmed down some when he saw the gravity in my lone exposed eye and took off immediately, dragging Sai with him.

After shutting the door, I headed into the bedroom where I grabbed my already prepared mission pack. Placing it near the bed, I slid my headband up and pulled down my mask before lifting the mattress to reveal the altered box spring underneath. In it, Sakura laid as pristine as the doll she was. I leaned down, placed a kiss on her lips and said goodbye. (Though not truly a goodbye as I carried her most important part in me, where she flitted and flew through the sky of my heart.)

With one last caress of her cool porcelain cheek, I fixed the bed and placed a seal –to both protect and deflect – over it. Passing the mirror, I spied part of a face in the rippling reflection with the mangekyou actively swirling in bloody hues. Then the scent of cherry blossoms bloomed, and my gaze shifted from mismatched eyes to ones like watercolor jade. A cool, slim hand unfastened my jounin vest and found its way under the loose shirt, dragging it up along my chest to expose the squiggling lines of controlled chaos – blackness swirling out from the center over which my…her…_our_ hearts thrummed in tandem.

As she laughed, I smiled.

_(I smiled.)_

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~fin~

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**A/N: **How was it? Good? Bad? Want to find me with a pitchfork? (Well, hopefully not the last bit!)

So the entire first part of the week, my mind focused on chapter 3 for Crimson Fall. Then Friday rolled around and my internal calendar (plus all the wonderful community posts) reminded me about Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. The poor waitress at lunch probably wondered when she could kick me out, but it was a very beneficial 2 hours of brain storming. During the drive home, more ideas popped up to the point where I'm mentally screaming, 'I have to write this! I have to write this now!'

Imagine that plus me wriggling around like a loon in my seat while clutching the wheel. Haha. So there you have it. My wackiness coming out and taking form in "Unbound". I truly hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Hopefully I'll survive the sudden death match to continue on to Week 2.

I did set myself three goals:

1. To use exactly 2,162 words, just like The Tell-Tale Heart

2. To use a 1st person point-of-view

3. To capture the feel of TTTH

Did I succeed? Let me know! All reviews and constructive critiques welcomed with open arms. I read and respond to everything sent me.


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